Rules
by Fan Fictional Authoress
Summary: They're everywhere, whether they're the rules parents give you, the laws of the land, or just the unspoken ones that no one ever talks about and yet still exist. And sometimes, it's that decision to break the rules that sets out the path for your entire life. This is the story of Penny Carter, the scrapped character of Doctor Who and almost companion. AU Season 4. Cannon-ish plot.


**_All translations, explanations, advertisements, and thought processes are at the end of the chapter._**

**__**Disclaimer: All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I don't own them.**__**

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**_Saturday, November_ _Thirtieth in Modern Day Hammersmith, England._**

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_Roller-Blading Santas Deliver Turkey on Black Friday!_

_By Penny Carter_

_'Rules: they are everywhere, whether they are the rules parents or other authority figures give you, the laws of the land, or just the unspoken ones that no one ever talks about and yet still know that exist. For instance, everyone knows that they shouldn't talk with their mouth full, make U-turns in an intersection, or dress up as Santa Claus on Black Friday, deck up their dog as a reindeer, and roller-blade around the mall with a huge red sack filled with Hillshire shaved turkey lunchmeat._

_Of course, people shouldn't have to make it a spoken rule about the whole roller-blading Santa escapade. However, with some people-like Fredric Carter and his merry band of trouble makers for instance-need actual written down rules, otherwise it's free game to break those unspoken rules._

_"It's not because I'm rebelling against Mom and Dad or want to become a juvenile delinquent," he says, "but rather, I am merely trying to test the boundaries of 'The Norm' in everyday society. People are becoming a bit too protocol orientated, because of the whole panopticon concept. I'm doing this for the good of the people; they need to realize that it's okay to break a rule now and again."_

_Mr. Carter took sociology and got inspired by the whole panopticon idea and the class assignment that followed it. The panopticon was originally just an idea from a man called Jeremy Bentham who philosophized a prison that was built in such a way, that a prison guard could be watching the prisoners at any given time, without them knowing whether or not they were being watched. This would create paranoia among the prisoners elevated to a sense that someone's watching, even when no one is, so that they become a self-governing group._

_According to Fredric Carter, "We live in a society that works like the panopticon. No matter where we are, whether it's in the schools, hospitals, factories, office building the streets, or even in our own homes, someone is watching us, someone might be watching us, or it feels like someone is watching us. We start to believe that the person watching is an omniscient being and knows stuff about us that we never told anyone before._

_"It is not whether you either break the rules because you feel like it or don't break them because it's the right thing to do. It is the fact we are having a mental debate with all those forces that could be watching us and condemning us for our rule breaking-whether we do it or not-even though logically we know no one could possibly see us. So, whether someone is watching us or not, we follow the rules anyway."_

_That is the concept of the panopticon._

_The Panopticon Brigade, a group that Mr. Carter founded and leads, is based off of the San Francisco Suicide Club. The Suicide Club took their name from a Robert Louis Stevenson short story about a small society of people who have agreed to kill themselves but live the remainder of their days free from social restrictions. The San Franciscans club had nothing to do with suicide, but the abandoning of restrictions. It was later renamed the Cacophony Society and later still to Cacophony 2.0; however, it is still basically the same thing._

_The whole idea still returns to concept of the panopticon though, since it makes them feel like they are being watched, they do the following: go where they can't be watched, do what the omniscient being would never want them to do, and behave in unorthodox way so to infuriate the unseen watcher while technically not break any rules at all._

_As earlier stated, Mr. Carter and his friends refuse to abide by certain unwritten rules and make people aware of the existence of those rules by breaking them in public. Some of the things Mr. Carter and his friends did were climb into the sewers, climb on the huge pine trees in the park, and have parties in graveyards. They see practically everything as a challenge: you must not play in the cemetery, you should not climb trees, you must not go into the sewers, etc._

_Mr. Carter loves to take his younger sister, Penny Carter, with him on all of his experiences and does not care for the opinion of his Mother or Father-'_

"No," A copper-haired woman growled, crumpling the paper she was writing on ruthlessly. "Too personal." After tossing the draft on the floor next to the other nine drafts, she started again stubbornly. After about thirty seconds, that draft was, too, deemed a failure. "Argh!" Penny yelled in disgust, before tossing that draft on the floor as well to join its ten predecessors. Throwing her work book across the room, she sat there and stewed silently for the most part.

Feeling the need to vent some more, if only on paper, Penny snatched her diary off a nearby shelf and started to furiously write in it. Penning down all of her day's frustrations into a simple entry, hoping for a break in her ill-natured demeanor at the moment. Most of her ire stemmed from her mother's naggings about how a "proper lady" shouldn't go romping around like a wild thing with her brother and his friends. She hated how her mother tried so hard to be posh after winning the lottery years ago. Looking to Penny's grandmother for advice and trying to turn Penny into a woman from the 1920's, trying to regress Penny's mentality to before the women's suffrage movement.

She hated that her whole family seemed to see her as a woman of no consequence and unable to do anything for herself. They only saw a little girl still in primary school with the pet name "Pookie." A name that she had since she was three and her family had been introduce to to the comic, _'Garfield,'_ likening her to the small teddy bear.

There were rules that she now had to follow, rules that hadn't been emphasized before. The thought of her not following these rules was impossible, unthinkable, for her family and her parents. The problem was to them-to her mother, father, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, friends, and maybe even to her own tutor-she was Pookie. Not Penny Carter, the name she received at birth. Not Penny Carter, a girl of intelligence and while not being a genius, definitely above-average smarts. Not Penny Carter, a girl who could solve a problem. Not Penny Carter, a girl who was just like any other girl.

The only exception was her grandpa-never "Grandfather," he refused to be called by that-he alone called her "Penny." She was raised as Pookie, a girl who was innocent, always in need of protection, and inconsequential. She was raised to pretend to be naive, without much sense of direction, and barely able to walk fifteen blocks down a street by myself without being hit by a car. Penny became so good in her acting that everyone she met believed it.

"Even you do it, Pookie. All those times you go with me and the guys or go hang out with Grandpa and his 'Alien Watchers.' We break the rules doing what we love to do," and how right her brother was. Fredric's idea of breaking the rules seemed ludicrous and was ludicrous to Penny at the time, but then something in her just sort of..._ snapped_. It started with Fredric nagging at Penny, it was nothing too unusual, he always was nagging at her to do _something _other than the routine that their mother and grandmother had set down for her everyday. However, he was more insistent than usual and his persist wearing down of her will had finally succeeded...

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**_13 Years Previous._**

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"But, Fredric, I think it is completely pointless. If everyone goes off the path, then isn't it an illusion? If every person thinks their fighting against your panopticon by treading across that lawn, when they are actually treading across the same path everyone else is treading, if that was the case, wouldn't the people who own the lawn take that sign down?"

"You have a point, but doesn't that 'Keep Off the Grass' sign bother you? Doesn't it make you want to walk across the grass?"

"No, not really."

"Doesn't it annoy you to have to take the extra five minutes to walk to the library to do your volunteering, when you could get there a lot faster by going across the lawn, because some landscape guy decided years ago that that was how the path should go?"

"Well, I...you see..." Penny faltered, "I mean, I do have to wake up thirty minutes earlier than I would like, but a lady must not sleep in; she should wake up early so she can start early for her day and be able to relax in the evening..."

Fredric scowled, "They've brain washed you, Pookie. You never think for yourself, and I know that there is a brain behind those _'big _and_ innocently clueless'_ eyes of yours. However, you always hide behind those stupid, restricting rules and regulations that the woman in our family force upon you, because you're the oldest of the family. You don't see them doing this with Rachel do you or at least not as throughly as they are with you?"

"Well..." She trailed off, troubled.

"Just think about it," Fredric continued eagerly, "think of the thrill, the _freedom._ You would _finally _be fighting against the system after year of always being a mindless lamb doing what the shepherd always tells you to do!"

"I...No, no, Fredric, this is _wrong_. I have the expectations of my family to uphold, I cannot betray their trust after working so hard to be able to work at the library."

"Work there or mostly sit there and stamp books that people want to check out because you are not allowed to do any physical labor?"

"Well, Fredric, you know-"

"Yes, I know only too well that a 'proper lady isn't supposed to do work that would wreck her image, in case her prospecting husband would find that undesirable.' This isn't the middle-ages or even the early to mid-twentieth century, Pookie! All of this stupid proper lady nonsense because of the fact Grandpa became rich from his inventions! How are you going to survive if you don't think for yourself? I know you better you even know yourself; I know you want to do this, but you know what's holding you back?"

"...No, Fredric, I don't."

"You aren't voracious, you never go after what you want. You are simply a puppet following the paths that everyone else plans for you, mindless and can't do anything by yourself. I guess you are going to need a push in the right direction if you ever want anything good to happen to you." Her brother shook his head disappointed and walked away. Penny didn't understand what he meant until the next day when she woke up only to find that she should have been awake twenty-three minutes ago.

The only thing that spared her brother from a smack-curtesy of Penny-for messing with her alarm clock, was the fact that ladies don't resort to violent action when upset, in fact, they were supposed to keep their emotions in check.

Penny instead hurriedly got ready for her day before sedately walking out of the house and out of its view as briskly as possible with her impending tardiness weighing heavily over her mind. She lengthened my pace and walk as fast as possible without turning it into a jog. Penny almost thought she would make it, but then she realised that her brother had also messed with her watch making it two and a half minutes slower than it should been according to the clock by the bus stop. Fredric _wanted_ Penny to break the rules and put her in a catch twenty-two situation.

If she followed the rule of "a lady does not run," she would be late and would break the rule of "a lady should never be late and should always be early by a few minutes." No matter what Penny did, she would end up breaking a rule and she-as a rule-_never_ broke the rules! Penny increasingly grew more and more stressed as time went on, but she still managed to keep herself in check.

Until the final straw suddenly decided to break her camel-self's back.

Penny saw the "Keep Off the Grass" sign and snapped. Rules controlled her life, almost every single aspect of it, and she never caught a break. Here she was trying to do as the rules dictated and they go and put her in a no-win situation where anything Penny did would be wrong. She would end up doing the one thing she had always strive so hard to not do: break the rules. Penny couldn't take it anymore and came to a major decision that would change her life forever.

If Penny was going to break the rules, she was going to break _every single rule she had ever been taught._

Penny admitted that in hindsight, she may have been overreacting when she came to that decision and she had changed to "break rules when they need to be broken or are unspoken," but she wouldn't have changed it for the world. She ignored the sign and had cut across the grass, running as if her life depended on it. She hadn't got caught, she was late but she was still able to keep her job, and she had just experienced the best five minutes of her life.

The next time her brother asked Penny if she wanted to join the "Panopticon Brigade" for a meeting and a mission, she didn't hesitate to accept.

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_**Modern Day.**_

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_'Anyway the whole point of this entry was to complain about my brother and his stupid club that I have a love-hate relationship with. My boss wasn't just content with my usual job of simply providing the well-done and professional pictures that everyone knows are the only truly outstanding things that I'm good for. He has somehow gotten this idea into his head that I suddenly have the ability to write an article about my view of the whole shindig while keeping it professional and mostly unbiased. Considering that I've failed draft number eleven, and I can hardly write half a page without any whining on my part, I would call this a hopeless excercise, wouldn't you?'_

I heaved a sigh, closing my diary and putting it back into its desired spot. The past week had been awful, and I feel like an angsty teenage girl all over again. I thought that I had been getting a fresh start on life this holiday season only for it to get royally screwed up. First off, my mother got so angry with me being a part of the whole "Roller Blading Santas" gag that she ground me for a week. I'm twenty-nine and living with my mother! I can't believe that it has come down to this, having to live with my _mother._

Maybe I should take Grandpa up with his offer of renting one of his rooms out so I don't have to live with the blasted woman who gave birth to me.

My trouble _really _started on my boyfriend Gary's birthday. I liked him well enough; he was smart and always sure of himself. We dated for a few months and then he wanted to take the step and have us live together and be roommates. I was unsure about it, but Gary, Mother, and Grandmother pushed for it, until I was convinced that they were right, that I was ready and simply nervous. I didn't find out until later that the only reason why my mother and grandmother wanted me dating Gary in the first place was because his family was rich.

The first taste of riches when Father won the lottery wasn't enough and they wanted _more _of it, even though what we had was even to live comfortably for the rest of our lives and be able to leave a reasonable inheritance to our remaining relatives. So I moved in a flat with him-paid by his parents, since he wouldn't let me pay my way for it because the _idea_ of having his girlfriend pay part of it was unthinkable but his parents paying for it just fine.

What _did _I see in him?

Anyway, when his birthday came around, I told him that I would be in Southport for the weekend, but I was actually preparing a surprise party for him. I had it planned out _perfectly,_ getting his parents to keep him busy for the day while the rest of us decorated the flat and got the preparations ready. It was in the evening when he finally came home to the flat. I was so frantic, wanting everything to be perfect for him, to have everything just right and precise, just the way he liked it.

I didn't want him to be disappointed, not on his birthday, not because of me. I rushed around the place energetically, calling out, "Shh, he's coming! Hush everyone, lights off!" We had stood in the dark for what seemed like _decades, _tense and waiting for the door to open so we could all shout, yell, and cause a general hullaballoo about Gary's birthday.

We hear the door unlock and slowly open, we manage to keep our silence until he turned the lights on. "Surprise!" We all screamed and shouted, laughing at his startled and shocked expression as he stood there, blinking owlish in the light. Then someone else walked in, a woman. She was striking and mesmerizing with her jet-black hair and piercing smoke-grey eyes. She was clad in leather pants, combat boots, an olive green shirt, and a leather bomber jacket. Her hair was up in a lazy high-ponytail and her face was clear, no need for makeup.

She couldn't have been older than twenty-one.

I would like to say I was able to handle it rather well, that I was able to kick him out with his girlfriend-just like that with a snapping of the fingers-and continue on partying with the rest of the guests, without Gary and his twenty-one-year-old girlfriend. I wish I could say that, I wish I _did_ that, but things don't always happen the way we wish it would.

Instead, I invited his new girlfriend to join us and urged the party to continue since everyone else had awkwardly fallen silent. Something in my eyes and my forced smile must have scared them, because they hurriedly did as I told them, acting like Gary didn't just walk in with his secret girlfriend and I, the hostess of the party, didn't just get replaced with some eye-candy.

Her name was Roxanne and she was my sister Rachel's age. She had been dating him for close to month and thought it was so nice that I would throw a surprise party for him. When she asked how I knew Gary, I couldn't find it in my heart to tell him that _I_ was his girlfriend, that _I_ lived with Gary in this flat, and that he was _cheating_ on both of us. I told her I was a close friend and to please take some cake since it tasted really good.

It was so easy for me to pack and leave by using the fire-escape once everyone was distracted enough by the party and drinks.

It was a long walk home to get from the city to the suburbs where Mother and Father lived in their house. I called my grandpa, the only person I could think of calling since both of my parents were at the party, but he couldn't come and pick me up since Grandmother had the other car and she was using it. I told him what happened and joked about it some, exclaiming, "Why-oh-why can't I find the right man?" When I hung up, I felt a bit better, but not by much.

It started to rain as I walked down the city center, under glow of the lamp lights as taxis and cars whizzed by. A flash of bright blue had briefly caught my eye, but the wind blowing water in my face discouraged me from investigating further. The rain didn't bother me much as I was wearing my raincoat; the only thing that really bothered me was all the time I had to myself to think without much distractions. I had thought about smoking, but quickly dismissed it, since it was Gary's habit not mine. I guess I shouldn't have stayed around him when he did that terrible habit, since second-hand smoke was just as bad, but whatever.

So I stayed home and moved in with my parents. A slight rift had formed in the relationship between my mother and I, because I wouldn't let her ideals control me any more and decided to grow up. She is still in denial, believing that I'm in some rebellious phase that I grow tired of soon enough and would complacently become "Pookie" again. I tell her time and time again not to hold her breath, but she still waited for the little-girl-me to come running home from primary school.

I don't have the heart to break it to her that, that side of me is never coming back.

Fredric decided to do me a favor and have me join him and the boys in their fantastic Thanksgiving gag to take my mind off things. It worked in its original purpose of helping me get over Gary, but it failed in the respect of keeping me untroubled. My boss went crazy and got his stupid idea that I'm suddenly a journalist. My mother _grounded _me for a _week._ And on top of it all, none of my friends know what to make of me since their illusion of naive, innocent, inconsequential _Pookie _is shattered and none of them know how to act around me anymore.

Life is beautiful.

As it was now, I can hear my mother ragging on and _on _ about me to her friends, slowly driving up the walls. I grit me teeth, trying to count to ten and remain perfectly sane. "-and _then_ she talks back to me, saying that _I'm _the one who needs to grow up! Really, it's _embarrassing _how she goes on about having a _job _of all things, thinking that she some hot-shot because she know how to take a picture!"

_One._

"Yeah, I know! Anyone could do it, I could do if it was respectable for a woman to go nancing about and getting absolutely _filthy_ trying to get _pictures. _I don't even know her anymore. She's just some wild thing now."

_Two._

"Maybe her meltdown with that Gary fellow caused her psychological damage."

_Three._

"I suppose I should get her a therapist, since she's finally gone barking mad with all that nonsense on Black Friday."

_Four._

"While, I'm at it, I might as well see if I can convince her to stop visiting Father. I think he's giving her strange ideas, with all that 'Alien Watching' business."

_Fi-Oh forget it._

I stood up abruptly, knocking over my chair which hit my calves in the process. I let out a curse, because it stung like mad, but I wasn't going to let that deter me. I marched over to my closet and dug out my suitcase, lifting it up and dropping it on my bed. I strided over to my dresser and yanked open my underwear drawer, scooping out everything before walking back to the bed to dump everything in my suit case. I repeated the process a few times, getting my pants, shirts, sweaters, and socks, before sitting on top of my suitcase to keep it closed so I could zip it shut.

I struggled for a moment or two before the zipper finally cooperated and closed the suitcase. Instead of immediately getting off of the dark forest green monstrosity and storming out of the room, like I had originally planned, I sat there thinking that perhaps I should try a more mature approach than what I was about to do. Maybe just calmly walk away and _not_ slam the door on my way out, most definitely not. I'm almost thirty, not thirteen, it's time to grow up.

"Mother, I'm moving out. I'll be back later to collect the rest of my things, alright?"

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I came back later the next day early in the afternoon, planning on getting everything done as soon as possible. I borrowed the car to get everything done in one trip with Grandpa coming along for the ride. He wanted to use the car while I put all my belongings in boxes, and he would be back later to help me load everything into the vehicle. I waved him goodbye and let myself into the large, empty house. I was utterly thankful that Mother had gone out with her mates and that Father was at work, which was completely unnecessary but done for appearances.

As I put away the boxes, I slightly regretted my reluctant refusal of Grandpa's offer to join him at the Alien Watcher's meeting instead of packing. However, it was that decision to stay home and pack that changed the rest of my life when the sky turned dark and suburbia was trapped under a dome. It was that decision that let me meet the most incredible man in the world. It was that decision that let me become "Penny" not "Pookie." That one decision was the best one I ever made, at the best time I could have ever made it.

He wore a blue pinstripe suit and red trainers, two things that didn't seem to go together but actually did really well. He had brown hair that seemed to have a windblown effect, like he ran his hand through it a lot when he was in deep thought. It reminded me strongly of my brother's hair which always appeared to have a perpetually tussled look from all the running around that he does. His brown eyes focused intently on my face as he tried to decide why the Criteeneans found me so interesting when previously I was the farthest thing away from anything of crucial importance.

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**_To Be Continued..._**

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_**Explanations: **_*Most of the information about the Panopticon and the San Francisco Suicide Club is true and gotten from various credible sites and books.

*Fun Fact: the name of Garfield's teddy-bear is called Pookie and Pookie is also my nick-name, but only my grandma is allowed to call me that.

*The character Penny Carter in this fan fiction is loosely based on the would-be companion imagined by Russell T. Davies. When I heard that she had been scraped and essentially dead, I felt so sad and decided to make a story for her. She was originally supposed to be a love-interest for the Doctor, close to her thirties, jilted, loves coffee, and very Donna-esque. She was originally supposed to appear in the "Partners in Crime" episode with the Adipose, but he had Donna return instead, and so Penny Carter was scraped except for her minor part as the journalist. This is an AU take on the whole idea.

*A lot of the rules that will be listed will be one that wouldn't make much sense in today's society, but would have in the twentieth century. The person in charge of the whole family is the grandfather technically, but the one who truly holds all the power is the grandmother. She is the one who raised the Mother and the daughters Rachel and Penny. Since Penny is the baby of the family (even though she's the eldest daughter) she has a lot more attention paid to her and the grandmother is all that much harder to make her the "proper lady." Penny would fit much better in the early 1900's than the early 2000's.

_**Advertisements:**_

**TITLE: **Female of the Species

**AUTHOR: **Bella the Strange

**ID:** 7388432

**SUMMARY:** The TARDIS decides she has enough fuel for one more little trip before insisting on taking the Doctor and Martha to Cardiff for a pit-stop. That one little change will affect so much. Female!Doctor.

**OPINION:** I loved it _so_ much, but the ending made me cry. Bella was _such_ a _tease_ when it came to Master/Doctor. :(

_**Though Process:**_

This is going to be a romance and bit more fast paced than I would have preferred, but according to the book "The Writer's Tale," that's how it's meant to be. Russell T. Davies said himself in the book that when the Doctor first sees her, it's like "wham! both hearts." So this is going to be an AU of season four, essentially, following all of Mr. Davies's original plans mentioned in the book. This first episode is going to be what he originally planed until Catherine Tate was available and the Adipose episode was born. I _will_ have Donna Noble reappear, she was just too integral to the Doctor's life as his bestest friend in the whole universe to not have her in this story. It's just going to take a while, I won't be following just the TV show, but also the books and comics of Doctor Who. Everything will pan out in the end.

Oh, and just so you know, this Penny was created long before Penelope from 'When the Stars Burn Out' came along and that THEY ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE. This story has NOTHING to do with my other story and should be taken as two completely different animals.

As it is, this story will be extremely slow in updates and I wouldn't hold your breath. I would recommend checking out 'When the Stars Burn Out' and 'Living Fiction' and 'Worlds Within Worlds' instead as those will be more regularly updated.

Happy Friday,

FFA, the Fan Fictional Authoress.

_Date Submitted:_ Friday, February 13, 2015.


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